The security risk to corporate electronic assets is evolving due to several industry trends. First, the use of mobile devices, such as smart phones, is being widely adopted across the business community. As they adopt them, the users of mobile devices expect to use those devices to perform many of their day to day business processes. For example, smart phones are now used to access corporate email systems and other critical business systems that contain potentially vast amounts of sensitive information. This sensitive information may include, for example, health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), financial information and confidential intellectual property. The existence of this sensitive information on mobile devices makes the information susceptible to data losses, for example, in cases in which the device is lost or stolen.
While the use of mobile devices increases the risk to corporate data generally, the risk may be based on how the mobile device is being used. For example, mobile devices located in certain regions or countries may present an increased risk to corporate data over mobile devices used in other regions or countries. Similarly, mobile devices utilizing particular network connection methods may present a higher risk (for example, sending data over unencrypted channels), when compared to other mobile devices.
While use of mobile devices is increasing the risk to corporate information assets, the evolving malicious software threat is also increasing that risk. Previous generations of malicious software might often destroy data on a computer or network after gaining control of a host computer. However, more modern malicious programs may take a more insidious approach. For example, instead of immediately damaging or destroying the infected hosts and their associated data, modern malicious applications may instead quietly subvert the host so that it may be put to use by the attacker. One of the more damaging attack profiles occurs when a malicious application is able to gain control of a computer for the purposes of forming a botnet.
A botnet is a network of compromised computers, each of which is known as a “bot.” These compromised computers, acting on the attacker's behalf and unbeknownst to the rightful owner of the computer, perform a variety of nefarious tasks, including participating in denial of service attacks or the sending of spam email.
Data theft from malicious software is also becoming an increasing problem. Fifty five percent of data loss is now attributed to data stealing malware web communications. The remaining 45% of non-web malware communications is caused by Trojans or email communications over non-web channels.
In some cases, a legitimate user may be unaware that their computer is infected with malicious software. This software may operate covertly, refraining from activities that may draw attention to its presence, such as excessive use of computing resources, including CPU, I/O channel bandwidth, network access, and the like.